f nothing else, the continuing fight over ObamaCare's infamous contraception mandate has revealed two profound cultural divides in America. The first is about the role of government. The other is about fertility. It increasingly seems as if the progressive secular worldview is almost hostile to fertility. The logic behind the contraception mandate all but implies that the only way to lead a truly free and human life is to lead a contracepted life. As the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez has argued, the mandate seems designed not so much to improve access to contraception  a nonproblem  but rather to...

If there were as many fiscal conservatives as there are people who claim to be, it is hard to see how Republicans would lose as many elections as they do. One frequently hears this political self-identification: Im socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. Or: If the Republicans werent conservative on so many social issues, I would vote Republican. Or: Its too bad the Christian Right dominates the Republican party. I would vote for the Republicans on fiscal issues, but I cant stand the religious Right. The same sentiment holds among many inside the Republican party. Most secular conservatives and the libertarian...

In New Mexico, a photographer declined to take pictures of a lesbian couples commitment ceremony. In Washington State, a florist would not provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. And in Colorado, a baker refused to make a cake for a party celebrating the wedding of two men. The business owners cited religious beliefs in declining to provide services celebrating same-sex relationships. And in each case, they were sued. Now, as states around the nation weigh how to balance the rights of same-sex couples with those of conservative religious business owners, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona must decide whether to sign...

Wicked. Crazy. Extremist. Those are the words Americans United For Separation of Church and State uses in reference to the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. But the organization, which claims to fight to ensure religious freedom for all Americans, is not using those words to describe Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who shot and killed 27 innocent souls. No, its reproach is directed at the religious right, including such figures as Mike Huckabee and William J. Murray, for daring to suggest that the eviction of God from the nations public schools just might have contributed to the rise of school-related violence and...

Guys  have a quick puff of your joint before heading down the aisle with your boyfriend. In addition to re-electing Obama, various American states voted to legalise dope and gay marriage. OK, so they weren't necessarily the same states, but you get the picture. Last night was a victory for secular liberal America  or, to put it another way, America's emerging secular liberal majority. The United States is still pious by European standards, but the gap is narrowing every year. You cannot visit American bookshops without being struck by the popularity of atheist cheerleaders or agnostic self-help gurus;...

(Church & State Magazine) â The movement known as the Religious Right is the number-one threat to church-state separation in America. This collection of organizations is well funded and well organized; it uses its massive annual revenue and grassroots troops to undermine the wall of separation in communities nationwide.Americans United staff members have carefully researched this movement, and here are the 10 Religious Right groups that pose the greatest challenges to church-state separation. Most of these organizations are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code, but the financial data includes some affiliated 501(c)(4) lobbying organizations operating alongside the...

Many on the left obsess over this strange notion that the religious right is conspiring to turn America into a theocracy. A case in point was a recent guest on my radio program Fairness Radio with Chuck & Patrick. Our guest, the ultra-liberal author and columnist Frederick Clarkson, stated, in a very scholarly and suave tone that he was convinced, after decades of research, that the Christian right was plotting a takeover. I asked him to name names and, after some hemming and hawing, he came up with Rev. Pat Robertson and the late Rev. R.J. Rushdooney. He darkly identified...

Dr. Robert George asked a question which provoked a response being labeled as a sign of a division in the "conservative" movement in America. ..."Is conservatism a three-legged stool or not?" Dr. George used the imagery of the late Ronald Reagan...I am a great admirer of the late Ronald Reagan. Like many other Catholics... The three legs are social conservatives, foreign policy conservatives and economic conservatives. The late President Reagan built an alliance of these three groups of conservatives which changed the political landscape of the Nation. The American Conservative Union (ACU) is the sponsor of the annual Conservative Political...

W. Cleon Skousen's book "The Five Thousand Year Leap" has been reissued, and after an endorsement from Glenn Beck, it was even briefly the No. 1 best-seller at Amazon.com. This is bad news for religious conservatism. Skousen's book is a slipshod mixture of tendentious history, bad theology and paranoid politics in the John Birch Society mold. It ought to be treated as a curiosity of the pre-Reagan right, a fantasy world where communist agents such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Dwight D. Eisenhower worked to undermine America.... The revival of Skousen-esque thinking via Glenn Beck's teary-eyed presentations on the...

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) have turned to evangelical Christians in a last-ditch effort to move immigration reform and climate change legislation. Democrats are making a direct appeal to the GOP base by turning to evangelical Christian and other religious leaders, and theres some evidence that the talks could be fruitful. Were encouraging Southern Baptists to reach out to senators and congressmen to encourage Democrats and Republicans to quit playing politics and deal with immigration reform in a fair way, said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Conventions Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. The political will...

Holy Scripture, despite all appearances, will not always be easy to interpret. We can be lulled into thinking our Âcommon senseÂ and Âby the letterÂ interpretation of a text is what God intends us to get out of it. However, if this is the case, there would be little to no debates about its meaning; there would be little confusion as to its purpose and how it applies to us today. St. Peter would not have needed to tell us that no prophecy of Scripture is to be interpreted privately, because all interpretations of Scripture would end up the...

I posted this first to the latest Glenn Beck thread. I think it embodies what Glenn is talking about in a concentrated summary and deserves notice, IMHO: A right-wing progressive can be defined as one who joins with the left in promoting the all-encompassing all-powerful Commerce Clause in order to push a social "conservative" or religious agenda, primarily today in the federal War on Drugs. (Right-wing Progressivism predates left-wing Progressivism in the alcohol temperance movement of the 1870s and also in the premature ending of Reconstruction and Plessy v. Ferguson institutional and statute-enforced segregation.) The right has been willing to...

In a day of ever-growing moral collapse and turmoil in Washington D.C. and our nation, the American Religious Right have been linking up together more and more on current social and moral issues called pro-natural laws. Many of the American Religious Right have even put aside sound Biblical teaching and eternal spiritual absolutes of time and eternity in favor of a greater "social unity with those who do not hold to such doctrines (Deut. 22:10; 2 Cor. 6:14; Eph. 5:6-8). Such godless and decadent social squeezing by the Left in America has been the very catalyst for an apostate ecumenical...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A collection of pro-abortion religious groups authored a letter today to members of the Senate that essentially places them on record supporting taxpayer funding of abortions. The letter expresses their opposition to the Nelson amendment, released today, to remove abortion funding from the Senate government-run health care bill. The Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church are the four mainline protestant denominations to sign the letter asking lawmakers to oppose the Nelson amendment.They are joined by the Disciples Justice Action Center, NA'AMAT USA, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a...

New research out this week has resolved a long-standing, and important, quandary about the causes of global warming. While several models point to anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gases as the leading cause of global warming, the warming trends do not quite match the history of anthropogenic CO2. In fact, shrinking glaciers and other undeniable evidences of warming trace back to about the mid seventeenth century. But this predates the significant rise in anthropogenic CO2 that came later in later centuries. Now environmental researchers have solved the puzzle...

Read the following mini-stories and much more by clicking the excerpt link below: 1. The Times: Evidence of Life on Mars Lurks Beneath Surface of Meteorite, Nasa Experts Claim 2. PhysOrg: Super-River Formed the English Channel 3. Wired: Theres No Such Thing as a Simple Organism 4. ScienceDaily: Study Pits Man Versus Machine in Piecing Together 425-Million-Year-Old Jigsaw 5. PhysOrg: Bacterial Gut Symbionts Are Tightly Linked with the Evolution of Herbivory in Ants 6. And Dont Miss . . .

New Zealand Climate Scientists Faked Data, Too. From Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That The New Zealand Governments chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasnt there. The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britains CRU climate research centre. In New Zealands case, the figures published on NIWAs [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century [go to the link to see...

In May 2009, a remarkably well-preserved extinct primate, nicknamed ÂIda,Â was hailed as one of the most important fossil finds ever. It had features that some interpreted as a link between two primate body forms. At the time, ICR News suggested that its evolutionary significance was far overblown, predicting that the scientific consensus would offer retractions. Those retractions came three months later, confirming that the fossilâcalled Darwiniusâwas really just an extinct lemur variety...

Natural selection and change, yes; Evolution, no --snip-- Summary 1.This episode talks much about change and natural selection, but fails to give any evidence that these produce evolution, other than for the various professors who assert that it does. 2.Darwins theory promoted the idea that man is a beast with animal lusts and no morality, and this has been gleefully accepted by much of modern society. 3.We might well ask: Why would any sane professor adopt and propagate a theory for which there is such paltry scientific evidence, which is an expression of hatred of God, and which demotes man...

Evolutionists retreating from the arena of science --snip-- Today, the Darwinian scientific consensus persists within almost every large university and governmental institution. But around the middle of the 20th century an interesting new trend emerged and has since become increasingly established. Evolutionary theorists have been forced, step by step, to steadily retreat from the evidence in the field. Some of the evidences mentioned earlier in this article were demonstrated to be frauds and hoaxes. Other discoveries have been a blow to the straightforward expectations and predictions of evolutionists. Increasingly, they have been forced to tack ad hoc mechanisms onto Darwins...

Dec 2, 2009  Field geologists have revisited a site Darwin visited on the voyage of the Beagle, and found that he incorrectly interpreted what he found. A large field of erratic boulders in Tierra del Fuego that have become known as Darwins Boulders were deposited by a completely different process than he thought. The modern team, publishing in the Geological Society of Americas December issue of the GSA Today,1 noted that Darwins thinking was profoundly influenced by Lyells obsession with large-scale, slow, vertical movements of the crust, especially as manifested in his theory of submergence and ice rafting to...

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design --snip-- (CNN) -- While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon. Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that...

Darwinism and the adoption of Chinese Marxism According to James Pusey, writing in Nature, "Charles Darwin's banner was first unfurled in China during the Reform Movement of 1895-98, in response to China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War." There were two groups seeking change: the reformers, who were loyal to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the revolutionaries, who wanted a clean break with the past. --snip-- The reformers and the revolutionaries debated vigorously "with both sides wildly waving Darwin's banner" The leaders of these movements imbibed the message of scientific racism coming from America and Europe and presented themselves as 'fit'...

Fungi are single or multi-celled organisms that break down organic materials, such as rotting wood, in order to absorb their nutrients. Neither plant nor animal, they range from mushrooms to single-celled yeast. Scientists were investigating organic chemicals trapped in an Italian sedimentary rock formation when they found evidence that an extinct fungus feasted on dead wood during a time when the worlds forests had been catastrophically eradicated.[1] What could have caused such a universal effect on forests, and why does organic material remain in rocks that are supposedly 251.4 million years old?...

ScienceDaily: Slowing Evolution to Stop Drug Resistance --snip-- For years, evolutionists have pointed to antibiotic resistance as proof of evolution in action. The argument often amounts to this (in simplified form): the fact that certain organisms grow resistant to certain antibiotics is evidence for the evolutionary idea that all animals must have descended from a single ancestor. Collapsing the argument does make it seem a bit silly, but thats our point. We certainly dont want to belittle the very real threat of dangerous organisms becoming immune to the best drugs we now have (though the vast majority of microbes are...

It has always amazed me how unconcerned evolutionists seem to be about entropy and the problems it poses both for a natural origin of life and for macroevolution. The argument from entropy is one of the most powerful arguments against the spontaneous formation of life from a random association of non-living chemicals...

Amateur fossil hunters Jamie and Jonathan Hiscocks were looking for dinosaur remains in East Sussex, UK, when they instead found tiny spider webs trapped inside a piece of ancient amber. Oxford University paleobiologist Martin Brasier inspected the amber, which was assigned an age of over 100 million years. He concluded that spiders back then were able to spin webs just like todayâs garden spiders.The amber-encased webbing formed concentric circles like those that contemporary orb-weaver spiders manufacture. Also evident were âlittle sticky droplets along the web threads to trap prey,â Brasier told the Daily Mail. He added, âYou can match the...

Not to mince words - the modern synthesis is gone --snip-- "The discovery of pervasive HGT and the overall dynamics of the genetic universe destroys not only the tree of life as we knew it but also another central tenet of the modern synthesis inherited from Darwin, namely gradualism. In a world dominated by HGT, gene duplication, gene loss and such momentous events as endosymbiosis, the idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable." ...

Creationists are Âliars' (?): Geologist Donald Prothero doesnÂt like the fact that we donÂt agree with his ideas on evolution. I love the attitude some evolutionists have toward professional, scientific debate. Because creationist scientists do not agree with their biased, subjective and unsubstantiated ideas they spit the dummy and call us liars. The latest tirade from geologist Donald Prothero is in an opinion piece in NewScientist entitled âEvolution: What missing link?â1 I like that title. His article was picked up by the Telegraph newspaper in the UK which reported, âCreationists âpeddle lies about the fossil recordâ.â2 Lies? Are creationists really...

The Great Rift Valley extends some 4,000 miles southward from Syria north of Israel, through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Ethiopia, and all the way to Mozambique in southeast Africa. It harbors a giant fault, which has been under investigation as a model for sea floor spreading. A recent geologic event rent a gaping crack through the desert of Ethiopia, causing safety concerns for locals. These crustal plate motions may foreshadow rifting events further north in the Great Rift Valley...

Volcanic activity in 2005 accompanied the formation of a deep, wide rift in Ethiopia on part of the 4,000-mile-long north-to-south trending Great Rift Valley fault. Studies show that the injection of mantle material that unzipped the earth along the fault operated the same way as similar material does in less-accessible undersea rifts. Scientists knew that rifts were formed in this manner, but the suddenness of this ones formation astonished them...

Darwinizing Everything --snip-- The Darwinians, who took over biology in the 19th century, are still busily engaged in mythmaking, comforting the feebleminded who accept their explanations as wisdom, denouncing the heretics who call their bluff. They wear S on their chests: Science, the equivalent of Superman in intellectual circles. They are phonies. Bring out the kryptonite of critical analysis. It scares them to death, even though they never had special powers to begin with...

Halloween has its origins in superstition and sadly, it invokes old and new superstitions still. Halloween, from "All Hallows Eve," was the evening before the Catholic All Saints Day and was supposed to be haunted by demons jealous of the holy day to follow. It also had roots in prehistoric Celtic mythology. But in modern times it's developed into a fun day where children dress in ghoulish or cute costumes and canvass the neighborhood for candy while adults at masquerade parties imbibe more mature fare. Granted some juveniles get more into the tricks than the treats. And the occasional morbid-Goth...

A Sickening Healthcare Call! Thursday, August 20, 2009 As the debate about healthcare rages, religious leaders are weighing in. In a recent teleconference, pastors from around the country gathered to discuss the issue with the White House (and record it for later non-partisan use). As I listened to the call, I had to fight to keep from hitting the stop button. The call began with a prayer led by a female pastor from Georgia (one of several female ministers, deacons and church leaders in what was an obvious nod to feminists, and the theological and political left) then descended into...

It doesn't rank with last year's Exorcism of Sarah Palin, but the Blessing of Newt Gingrich is an early contender for Church-Based Political Moment of the 2012 presidential campaign. It's also the clearest evidence yet that Gingrich is positioning himself to the far Christian Right of fellow 2012 presidential hopefuls Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Gingrich's latest venture into the conservative evangelical world came when he spoke/preached at Lou Engle's "Rediscovering God in America" conference last Friday, hosted by Rock Church in Virginia Beach and broadcast on GodTV. Last month, Gingrich made a very public conversion to the Catholic faith...

On Sunday, abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered at his church in Wichita, Kan. He was one of a handful of doctors in the U.S. who performed late-term abortions and for decades had been a target of virulent criticism from antiabortion activists. His clinic had been bombed and vandalized, and in 1993 he was shot in both arms in a failed assassination attempt. Tiller's alleged killer, Scott Roeder, is a long-time radical antiabortion activist with reported ties to a militant antigovernment organization called the Freemen. Within hours after the murder, every antiabortion group in the country denounced the attack. Robert...

A new polling analysis from Gallup finds that the Republican Party has lost support among nearly every major demographic subgroup, from college graduates to married people to those making under $30,000 a year. In 2001, 47 percent of college grads leaned Republican. Today, just 37 percent do. Support among married people has slid from 51 percent to 46 percent. Just 28 percent of those making less than $30,000 lean Republican, down 9 points in the past eight years.

Is "Christian America" dying? And if so, should we mourn or cheer? These questions, raised in a recent cover story by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, opened a vigorous and continuing debate (note: I am an occasional contributor at Newsweek). The article has been peppered with criticism from religious conservatives who say it demonstrates the anti-religious bias of the mainstream media. This reaction actually demonstrates something different: that it is easier to read a headline than it is to read an article. The Newsweek cover declaring "The Decline and Fall of Christian America" was provocative in a typical, newsmagazineish sort of...

Another obituary was written about the "Religious Right," and as we Christians just passed Palm Sunday on the way to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, it is an excellent time to do some soul searching. Washington Post reporter Kathleen Parker queries in her article "Political Pullback for the Christian Right" whether the movement is dead, ineffective or has lost its way. "Is the Christian right finished as a political entity? Or, more to the point, are principled Christians finished with politics?" she asks. She then goes on to include criticisms of leaders like Dr. James Dobson as either having compromised...

OPINION - Pat Robertson, one of those Christian spokesmen that makes Christians cringe every time he opens his mouth, has struck again. At least hes not calling for violence this time. Strangely, though, this time around he is endorsing Obama and Obamas coming socialist policies. Kurt Nimmo at Infowars reports: On December 23, the conservative preacher Pat Robertson told CNNs Suzanne Malveaux that he was pleased as punch with the election of Barack Obama. I am remarkably pleased with Obama. I had grave misgivings about him. But so help me, hes come in forcefully, intelligently. Hes picked a middle of the...

Learning From Conservative History: Main Trails . . . and Less-Traveled Paths - 01/02/09 This is part three of a symposium on contemporary conservatism hosted by ISI at Yale in November, 2008. Read part one. Read part two.By training, I am an historian. I love the discipline and believe that historical mindednessthe ability to see and understand the grounding of current institutions, issues, and events in the complex matrix of the pastthis is the superior way to make sense of reality.All the same, I have been troubled for over a decade by the growing interest of American conservatives in...

December 05, 2008, 1:40 p.m. Enough with the Oogedy-BoogedyReligion, politics, and us. By Shannen W. Coffin Kathleen Parkerâs war on religion in the Re-public-an square entered a new phase today. In her syndicated column, she nobly attempted to explain her use of the term âoogedy-boogedyâ to describe religious conservatives. Itâs not that she is âanti-God.â Itâs just that God really shouldnât be mentioned in polite company. Religion can inform our values (gee, thanks). But reason, not religion, should inform our public debates. I hadnât realized religion and reason were mutually exclusive. It seems Pope Benedict hasnât gotten the memo,...

In this, the interregnum between the end of one administration and the beginning of another, theres not much for Republicans to do except look for ways to entertain themselves while Democrats are occupied with the serious business of creating a government. The problem  and the GOP is just waking up to this  is that there is absolutely nothing for them to do but wait. No one cares what they think of President-elect Obamas choice for attorney general or any other cabinet post. The Clinton drama has always been a Democratic farce and only involved the Republicans as onlookers,...

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit. Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D. I'm bathing in holy water as I type. To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh. Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among...

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, he will do so in the 30th anniversary year of the founding of the so-called Religious Right. Born in 1979 and midwifed by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Religious Right was a reincarnation of previous religious-social movements that sought moral improvement through legislation and court rulings. Those earlier movements  from abolition (successful) to Prohibition (unsuccessful)  had mixed results. Social movements that relied mainly on political power to enforce a conservative moral code weren't anywhere near as successful as those that focused on changing hearts. The...

David Frum to the Religious Right: Drop Dead Posted by Tom Piatak on November 05, 2008 After weeks of expressing contempt for the delcasse Sarah Palin, David Frum has now expressed his disdain for the voters who liked Palin and who have propelled the GOP to victory after victory since Reagans election in 1980, the evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics who vote Republican because of their concern over issues like abortion. According to Frum, such voters need to be jettisoned because College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats--but their values are under threat from...

While it is sometimes useful to think of political and social groups as either "left" or "right," there are times when such labels are extremely misleading. Political commentators run into particular problems when they think of evangelical voters as the "Christian right." A recent USA Today editorial, for instance, was headlined Why the Christian right fears Obama." The author argued (in essence) that the Christian right fears Sen. Barack Obama because the Christian right isn't all that fond of Sen. John McCain and might shift its support to Obama. The author here is only one of many commentators who, not...

At a meeting Tuesday in Denver, about 100 conservative Christian leaders from around the country agreed to unite behind the candidacy of John McCain, a politician they have long distrusted, marking the latest in a string of movement that bodes well for McCain's general election prospects among the Republican base. "Collectively we feel that he will support and advance those moral values that we hold much greater than Obama, who in our view will decimate moral values," said Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group, who previously supported Mike Huckabee's candidacy. "There are people who came...